After the goof-up of not heating the boards up enough for lead-free solder, I simply re-did the reflow with a 250°C temperature profile. This appears to be near the limit of what my reflow grill can do, btw.
Here’s a fully assembled JeeLink:
Note that I soldered all headers in, including two which aren’t supplied standard with the JeeLink:
As shipped, the JeeLink comes with the 4 port headers, not yet soldered in.
While it still takes me quite a bit of time to assemble these JeeLinks, all four of the ones I did are now working (ahem, that’s a lie: I shipped two JL’s without proper testing… impatient as I was!).
So this story has a happy ending – the JeeLinks are ok now, it’s time to move on …
These look great JC, keep up the great work
So, JC….. you ship my JeeLink without propper testing ;-)
If everything is going ok , your JeeLink / JeeNode is running a interactive installation / game for kids in a museum in two weeks.
I just finished the prototype with a Arduino mini, an ADXL330 and a RFM12B using your libraries. I’m now trying to make a power saving version ( using your lightySave example). I’ll send you the source later on.
Heh – actually, your JeeLink was tested (and updated) to work properly – re-flashed the bootstrap, everything should work. Nice application!
It looks great. I just ordered a whole set, and can’t wait to start playing with it. Keep up the great work (I hope the plugs will be in store soon too :-)
I just ordered a JeeLink and a couple of JeeNodes to start playing with. I’ve also spent my whole weekend reading your blog from the very beginning! It took some time but I think it was time well spent. I was inspired to finally start on some new projects. Keep up the great work!
Like Szymon, I would love to see some of your new plugs in the store. In particular, the room plug and LCD plug would be really useful. I’d also love to see a relay plug of some sort; right now most of the plugs are input centric but I can envision lots of neat uses for JeeNodes actually influencing their environment, not just monitoring it.
Heh, thanks :)
Yes, I’m looking forward to getting some plugs ready. It’d be nice to get some more room plugs in the house – got 5 hand-made ones so far myself, the pcb’s will be a lot more convenient.
Unfortunately, I messed up the first design of most plugs in all sorts of stupid ways – so it’s going to at least one more prototyping rounds before I can even think about getting a number of these made. That means it’ll take at least another month to be able to have something ready to go.
For the relay, I was considering a latching relay rated 250V @ 5A or so. That way, it might still be usable with a battery as you wouldn’t have to keep the coil energized in either position. This requires 2 I/O pins, so one idea would be to include an I/O expander chip and have up to 4 of them on a single board. The relays I’ve found so far all need 50 .. 200 mA @ 3.3 .. 24V – so there are still some issues on just how to get the right power to these things. Maybe get a DC in jack on there and have this board power the rest of the system too via a wall adapter? Hm, that sort of negates the battery thing… lots of choices!
If it’s about turning A/C appliances on and off, I use remotely controlled RF switches, see http://jeelabs.org/2008/12/16/switching-stuff/ http://jeelabs.org/2008/12/07/home-control/ I don’t know what would be most suitable in the US, though.